The Reckoning

So after all that scrimping and saving, how did we do in October ? Well the everyday household spending came to just over £990, which is very good. It means that we only spent around 2/3 of our income. The food budget was spent right up to the limit and the petrol budget was overspent, however, we didn't go anywhere last week so I still have a full tank of petrol to carry over into November. 

The big expenses were making the annual contribution to the school and getting a new passport for MasterShoestring, it wasn't just the cost of the passport but also the photographs and special delivery for the application as it contained his still valid passport. Now, we could have taken the passport pictures ourselves to save a bit of money but MasterShoestring is very conscious of how he looks just now, being a teenager, so we decided that it wasn't worth the fuss he would probably make to get them just right !

The other big spending was on back care items and a kneeling chair, but that came from savings which are kept deliberately to pay for items like this so I did not feel too bad about spending the money ! We also had to put down a deposit on MasterShoestring's prom ticket which I hadn't budgeted for at the start of the year, we didn't reckon he would want to go, but he does. So that came out of the Miscellaneous line item in the budget !

We were very fortunate that October is a month that does not contain any big items of annual expenditure, such as car insurance, so we were able to concentrate on spending just on essentials. That means we have got a sizeable chunk to put away in the annual fund ! So that's what I'm going off to do now !